Page 43 of Jax

“Morning,” he rumbled, walking over and dropping down onto the side of the bench he’d claimed last night.

“Morning,” I said back, pulling my legs out from the blanket thrown over my lap. I gave him a quick look over. “You look terrible.”

He snorted. “Come on, Ron. You know I never look anything less than gorgeous.”

“I see the attention you’ve been getting has finally gone to your head,” I scoffed. Jackson already had an ego after three quarters of the entire girl population of our high school had fought for their turn to go on a date with the school’s hottest cowboy, and I could see it had done nothing but grown over the last decade.

His dark lips turned up in a quick smirk before he sighed and sank deeper into the bench, a fleck of white paint chipping off the wood with the motion and drifting onto the porch. “I got back from the club only a few hours ago, and I caught maybe an hour or so of sleep at the most.”

After my debriefing last night, Jax had left me here with a pretty blonde who went by the name of Pretty Boy, which was unsurprising with his model looks. Jax had returned to the club with the rest of the members for a late-night meeting before coming back and relieving the friendly but tired Black Angel who sat at the kitchen table, scribbling in college books the rest of the night. I had given him coffee, wanting to keep him company since he was nice to chat to, but once I realized that I was disturbing his work, I went to bed.

I had awoken to the sound of Jax’s returning bike, hearing him come in and when no steps followed up the stairs in my direction, I fell back to sleep before waking half an hour ago to find him crashed out on the couch.

“What are you doing out here?” Jax interrupted my reflection.

“I was thinking.” I frowned after taking a mouthful of my cooled coffee. Nobody likes cold coffee.

Long fingers splayed over the top of my coffee cup, making me jump as Jax stole the mug from my hands and brought it to his lips, downing the cold coffee in a single go.

“You like cold coffee?” I couldn’t hide the grimace in my voice.

“You don’t?” Jax’s dark eyes went wide, a hand slapping over his chest. “That’s scandalous. You think you can get away with drinking hot coffee all the time during the heat in Oregon or Texas. You’d die.”

“I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “And cold coffee is gross.”

“Well that’s a first thing to check off the list.”

“List?”

“Getting to know each other.” Jax’s nudged my shoulder with his, tilting me sideways. “You don’t like cold coffee. I do. That’s one.”

From the conversation Jax and I had last night and the last few weeks we’d spent together, I was sure that this wasn’t the first new thing I’d learned about Jax, nor the first thing he’d learned about me.

I smiled anyway.

“I think I’m liking this whole truce thing.” I shrugged, pulling the blanket off my legs and shuffling across the bench, the old thing giving a creak in protest.

“Yeah.” Jax smiled back. “Me too.”

“So…,” he began, and I watched as he leaned down to put the empty mug on the floor beside the leg of the bench.

“So…?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow in his direction.

“Tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything,” Jax said, then paused and amended himself, “something I don’t know.”

“Um, let’s see,” I hummed, scanning for something interesting. “Did you know that when sensing danger, a chicken will kill its own children?”

Jax choked, sitting up straight. “What the hell, Ronnie?” He glared. “I said something interesting, not something morbid.”

“But,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “It was something you didn’t know. That’s what you asked for.”

“Don’t play games with me, Ronnie Marsh,” he tutted, reaching over to pinch my leg. “You know exactly what I meant.”

I hissed, before trying to do the same. He slid to the other side of the bench before I could catch him, pressing close to the wonky arm. If I wanted him, I’d have to move from my spot, which I didn’t want to do. Moving would break my timeless sense of tranquility. The cool breeze, and quiet around us was my illusion that time wasn’t moving, and my day didn’t have to start.

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